Chitin is an abundant natural macromolecular substances in the exoskeleton of arthropods. It could be converted by deacetylation to chitosan, which is -1, 4- polymer of 2-glucosamine. Chitosan is significantly soluble and bioactive, being widely used in medicine, cosmetics, food industry, water treatment and chemical industry. Treated with concentrated alkali, the current technology of chitosan production is deficient, unstable, squandering of energy, and, especially, contaminative.
According to a currently promising technology of deacetylation using chitin-active enzymes, we found out that Chitin Deacetylase (CDA) could hydrolyze the acetamino group on chitin, directly yielding chitin, and the only industrial-available source of chitin is the especially high-crystallized chitin from shell of crustacea like shrimp and crab. In order to applicate enzymolysis method to industry, separation, identification and production of crystal-chitin-active-enzymes is crucial, both promoting industrialization and giving instruction to scientific research.
In our research, we chose several CDA and chitinase sequences, synthesized them, complemented them with respective domains, and cultivated them in plasmid pET-28a. After inserting plasmids into competent cells and searching for optimal induction condition for expression, we would finally find out maximum viability and put the research to model for factory production.
